Home Bakers Convinced There’s a Butter Conspiracy at Costco

Some home bakers on Reddit are convinced there’s a butter conspiracy afoot at Costco Wholesale stores.

It all started when a Reddit user claimed they were having “Costco butter issues.”

“My mom and I have been Costco ‘blue box’ salted butter loyalists for some time. I saw a TikTok where a baker had issues with a recipe and had made it with Costco butter for years but recently had been having issues. She finally tried with another butter and issue solved,” the woman wrote.

“Didn’t think much of it until Thanksgiving. We used butter for our pie crust recipe and that crust would not hold up! [Two] batches just crumbly and could not get it to roll. Went to store got different butter, and what do you know… Same recipe, worked again,” she continued.

“Something changed with their butter. Did anyone else have issues over the holidays with the butter? I’m hesitant to bake with it for any recipe now,” the frustrated home baker concluded her now-viral post.

The woman and her mom weren’t the only people who apparently had issues with Costco’s Kirkland Signature store-brand butter recently, however.

In the comments section, other Reddit users shared their own issues with the wholesale store’s butter.

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“Yes! This butter bakes oddly. Cookies took longer to bake and the texture was too chewy,” one user commented.

“Wait, are you kidding me? My Thanksgiving pie crust totally gave me ‘crumbly’ issues and I’m usually a pie pro! I stock up on the blue-box Costco butter and used it,” someone else chimed in.

“That makes sense! I thought the culprit should be butter for my son’s thinner and more-fragile chocolate chip cookies and my more crumbly cranberry butter cake, but I hadn’t changed butter sources,” another reader commiserated.

“I’ve never had luck with Costco butter for baking … I use their knockoff Kerrygold for literally everything but baking, and I defer to my local store brand (Kroger or Aldi, depending on if Kroger is on sale) for butter for baking purposes,” someone else shared.

“It’s not the only brand I’ve had issues with this year. Tillamook unsalted has also changed. Or at least I can say that I had a recipe (something I’ve made for years as well) fail [three] times using it. I switched to Trader Joe’s Organic and it came together without issue,” another user revealed.

Meanwhile, Reddit isn’t the only platform online this butter conspiracy has spilled into.

On TikTok, a woman who “bakes a lot” for her own pop-up bakery has theorized that Costco, as well as other companies, might be watering down their butter as a “skimpflation” tactic (not to be confused with “shrinkflation”).

Have you noticed anything strange about the butter you usually use for baking? Someone butter get to the bottom of this soon…